Beyond some specific use cases, they don't seem to scale cognitively. The tangle of connections is a problem.
Tons of things like this were built in Smalltalk. (Including a UI->Domain model connection layer in the IBM VisualAge Smalltalk IDE.) They all had scaling problems, especially, "they don't seem to scale cognitively."
It's not as if the problem doesn't exist in most codebases. It's more that the problem is invisible without such tools. Tools making the tangle visible make themselves seem unusable.
The fundamental problem, is that we don't have ways of introspecting these horrendous relationship graphs for specific contexts. If IDEs and other programming tools generally could create custom browsers/IDE windows for things based in queries like:
"All of the methods that contain references to ClassA.Member1 and ClassB.Member2 which also call function Y."
...where this query can be modified or further specified at runtime. Then there could be specific built in queries that cover everything touched by canned refactorings. Then these further could be intersected or unioned.
EDIT: Forgot to complete my thought. If the graphical diagram could show contextually relevant slices of the system, it would greatly cut down the confusing web aspect of the diagrams.
Tons of things like this were built in Smalltalk. (Including a UI->Domain model connection layer in the IBM VisualAge Smalltalk IDE.) They all had scaling problems, especially, "they don't seem to scale cognitively."
It's not as if the problem doesn't exist in most codebases. It's more that the problem is invisible without such tools. Tools making the tangle visible make themselves seem unusable.
The fundamental problem, is that we don't have ways of introspecting these horrendous relationship graphs for specific contexts. If IDEs and other programming tools generally could create custom browsers/IDE windows for things based in queries like:
"All of the methods that contain references to ClassA.Member1 and ClassB.Member2 which also call function Y."
...where this query can be modified or further specified at runtime. Then there could be specific built in queries that cover everything touched by canned refactorings. Then these further could be intersected or unioned.
EDIT: Forgot to complete my thought. If the graphical diagram could show contextually relevant slices of the system, it would greatly cut down the confusing web aspect of the diagrams.